It looks like the good old times are back, because according to github we have been getting several commits from scrawl every day for the past two weeks or so. Looking at the optimizations he has been making, we can expect a boost in fps in the next version of OpenMW.

One thing sticks out for me - small object culling is now configurable in settings.cfg. It was initially hardcoded that objects smaller than 2x2 pixels on your screen will be culled, but now you can decide for yourself how many pixels you want to cull in exchange for better fps. If paired with a simplified land mesh, which scrawl was working on before he went on a break, we might just have distant land on the horizon.

In other news, Allofich has fixed a bug that had always irked me. If you were to go for a quick swim and ignored the fish, combat music would constantly be playing around that area even when you were on dry land. Now, those of us who can't be bothered with the small fish can enjoy the main theme of Morrowind again.

Finally, I chanced upon some really interesting stuff on the tes3mp project. What they have essentially done is set up a server that saves the changes that visiting players imprint on the world. Player interactions are not just limited to dropping items, but also adding objects through the console. The tes3mp developers have made some screenshots of the results and I'll leave the link here for you to enjoy.

I've had a chance to talk with the tes3mp crew, they are pretty gung-ho about getting the 'state' thing hammered down. They have a good work-flow that allows them to merge in upstream changes with minimal merge-conflicts. Trying to keep out of 'our' way is very hard work for such a long living fork.

I invited them come to the forums and talk about their project, in the cause of improving our working relationship and of course in the interest of eventually getting multiplayer support into mainline OpenMW.

They said they will eventually show up here once they nailed NPC state.

I'm super excited about this!

I have so many questions and I'm sure a lot of you do as well, please ask them here so we can queue them all up for an answer later.

I think everyone wants it to happen, but the code has to be in a maintainable state and not break single anything. The Tes3MP guys will want to achieve these things too, so with any luck, it's just going to be a matter of time and ensuring both projects have enough manpower.